The Price of Artichokes

Nicholas Howe

How excessive was the excess of the past? Scott Fitzgerald may have decided that the very rich are different from you and me, but they live in our own time; so we can begin to comprehend their wealth, even when spent on private jets, triplex penthouses or million-dollar birthday parties. The scales for measuring wealth in the past seem less certain, when the contemporary value of a pound or louis or scudo is difficult to fix except in terms of relatively abstract comparisons. It helps to know that in 16th-century Italy, however, a stable boy could earn five scudi a year, a chief cook 24, and a steward 62, along with some of their meals and other perquisites; and these numbers can be set beside the average annual income of 10,000 or 12,000 scudi of a potentate on the rise such as Ippolito d’Este (1509-72), second son of Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and Lucrezia Borgia. With parents like this, one is not surprised to learn that Ippolito made a good start on the road to wealth and position when he was named archbishop of Milan at the age of nine.

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